President-elect Donald Trump has disavowed the white nationalist movement which dubs itself the “alt-right” and which rallied around his candidacy, but vigorously defended his former campaign chairman and newly appointed White House chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, a man accused of fanning the flames of white supremacy.

“I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group,” Trump said at a meeting with a group of New York Times journalists, in response to a question from the newspaper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet.

“And if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why,” Trump said.

The selection of Bannon, the executive chairman of the far-right website Breitbart News , deepened the fears of liberal activists that the Trump administration would embolden and enable antisemites, racists and misogynists of the so-called “alt-right ”.

“I’ve known Steve Bannon a long time. If I thought he was a racist or alt-right or any of the things, the terms we could use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him,” said Trump on Tuesday, according to journalists in attendance.

“Breitbart is just a publication. They cover stories like you cover stories. They are certainly a much more conservative paper, to put it mildly, than the New York Times. But Breitbart really is a news organization that has become quite successful. It’s got readers, and it does cover subjects on the right, but it covers subjects on the left also. It’s a pretty big thing,” said Trump, according to a tweet from Times political reporter Michael Grynbaum.

New York Times journalists also quizzed Trump on his commitment to free speech, the first amendment of the constitution. “I think you’ll be happy,” he replied.

The meeting, billed as a lunchtime discussion between New York Times journalists and five members of the Trump campaign including the president-elect, was contentious from its inception.

Hours before the meeting was scheduled to start, the president-elect abruptly canceled it, claiming on Twitter that the newspaper, which he called “failing” and “not nice”, had changed the “terms and conditions” of the meeting. The newspaper confirmed the meeting was back on just hours later.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

I cancelled today's meeting with the failing @nytimes when the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment. Not nice

The on-the-record meeting was attended by 23 reporters, editors and columnists and four members of Trump’s campaign team. It covered topics ranging from what Trump perceives as the media’s “unfair” treatment of him, to the roles his children and business will play in his administration, to Syria and climate change.

Trump, who tweeted in 2012 that global warming was a hoax “created by and for the Chinese” in order to harm US business, acknowledged on Tuesday that climate change had “some” connection to human activity.

“I think there is some connectivity. Some, something. It depends on how much,” he said, according to tweets from reporters. He also added he was concerned about climate change mitigation and “how much it will cost our companies”.

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When asked if Trump plans to withdraw from international climate deals, such as the Paris accord, he replied: “I’m looking at it very closely. I have an open mind to it.”

Trump also altered his stance on his former rival Hillary Clinton. Despite having regularly referred to Clinton as a criminal who deserved jail time during his campaign, a notion echoed by supporters’ chants of “lock her up” during his rallies, Trump confirmed he does not intend to jail Clinton for her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state.

“My inclination would be for whatever power I have on the matter is to say let’s go forward. This has been looked at for so long, ad nauseum,” said the president-elect.

Locking up Clinton “would be very, very divisive for the country”, said Trump, according to reporters in attendance.

Trump was also quizzed by editors and reporters about his own conflicts of interest with his family’s business, a large real estate company.

“In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There’s never been a case like this,” said Trump, noting that he is delegating the day-to-day running to his children in order to focus on the presidency.